


Dispatch Notice

by thedevilchicken



Category: Alien Quadrilogy (Movies)
Genre: Androids, M/M, Morally Ambiguous Character, Robot/Human Relationships, Science Experiments, Weyland-Yutani
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 15:37:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19153951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Michael Bishop, head of the synthetics division for Weylani-Yutani, is about to move into bioweaponry. His last act in his current role is to make a synthetic model that looks just like him.





	Dispatch Notice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/gifts).



It's a common though frankly baffling misconception that roboticists working on Weyland-Yutani's lines of synthetics build each new model from the ground up. 

Surveys show that the average layman imagines teams in white coats all huddled around hi-tech drawing boards in brightly-lit labs, shaping new pieces, writing new code, young and sharp and filled up to the brim with wide-eyed enthusiasm. The models all look different on the outside; popular consensus is that they must be different on the inside, too. Isn't that what _new_ means? 

This is the image that Weyland-Yutani works to project to its customers and to the world at large: this notion of newness and novelty and freshness of ideas, of light and space and cutting-edge technology, collaboration and excitement. Michael, on the other hand, knows exactly how much bullshit that all is behind the scenes. You could measure it in meters cubed because that's what the company runs on: heaps of bullshit spun into excellent PR. 

Chances are Weyland-Yutani spent more on marketing last quarter than they did on their synthetics division for the year. Who needs innovation, after all, when you can just _pretend_ your shit's all new? It's not like anyone will know the difference. It's not like anyone's checking what's underneath the hood, behind the veil, down in the basement. The employees all signed NDAs, so what's to lose?

They don't start from scratch with every model because the top dogs say there's just no sense in reinventing the wheel. Besides, they don't have funding for that, or the time. All they ever do is make do and mend, recycling what they've had for years into something they can call new and improved. And, for his sins and not nearly enough money, Michael is the one who oversees it all. 

"Make it look like me," he told the team, when they were getting toward the outerwork stage with the newest model. They maybe looked at him strangely, like he'd told them to make it bark and walk around the lab on all fours, but they didn't question the order. He'd fired two of them the previous week when they'd had questions for him about the code - they weren't hired to question, they were hired to _do_ \- and they all knew what firing meant: they'd never work again, not in robotics. He maybe felt bad about that, but what came after severing their employment was really not his call.

So, they made scans. Half the reason they didn't use real humans as models was how goddamn long the scanning process took, getting images almost right down to the molecules of every last inch of every part of him, stationary and in motion. He spent weeks walking, jogging, running, on flat surfaces, inclines, stairs. He bent and twisted, flexed his fingers and toes, sat still and let them scan his eyes in lights so bright he saw stars for a half hour after. They scanned his teeth and his tongue and the inside of his mouth. They scanned his fingerprints and toeprints, the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. They took samples of his hair, from his head and his chest and his legs and his underarms and his pubic area, ears and nose and jaw, eyebrows, eyelashes. They scanned him as he breathed, measuring volume of air intake and how it moved his body. They scanned his bones and his veins and inserted endoscopes into all kinds of places he didn't want to give much thought to after. That was another reason they didn't use real humans as models: they tended to balk at the levels of invasion the process required. He told himself he didn't give a damn that his team all knew exactly what his larynx looked like, or that there was footage of the movement of his foreskin kept on file. 

They synthesized layers of muscle to stretch over the skeleton, to precise and detailed specifications; when Michael watched the installation, it was like watching himself being built. They synthesized layers of skin to stretch over the muscle, every inch of it a perfect replica of his own; when he watched the installation, it was like watching himself be born again. They induced activation. The synthetic's eyes opened. They looked just like his. 

There was rigorous testing, or at least testing exactly as rigorous as the regulations call for. The first one passed with flying colors and so they've put the rest of the run into production now, off-site, in a separate facility - there'll be sixty of them initially, destined for use in a variety of military and civilian contexts, on ships and planets throughout the colonies. Michael has never left Earth but the Bishops will. He knows his team thinks that's why he's done it, like spiritually he'll see the galaxy from the comfort of his office. He's let them believe that, but it's not the reason at all. 

They like to think they're standing on the shoulders of giants, and the public likes to think they start each line with a blank new slate, but they don't. It hasn't been that way since right back at the start, when everything was new. Now, when you look inside a Weyland-Yutani synthetic, some of the parts are different, more efficient, but the code they run on's like a patchwork quilt that's been periodically set on fire then patched again. There's parts of every other one that went before them in there. This one's part Walter, part David, part Ash, and all the rest. 

He goes into the lab. It's not the bright white space the recruitment ads all make it out to be - it's in a sub-basement eight floors underground with thick gray concrete walls in case they have some kind of an accident with their equipment, so explosions won't disturb the brass upstairs. Their collaborative workspace is eight high stools around a set of battered plastic-topped work tables, and every flat surface is smudged with grease or covered up in tools and parts and schematics. There's an ear on the desk at one station. There's a stack of metal fingers at another, and one of their synthetics is lying on a table, on standby, in the build room. It's all a bit Frankenstein's castle until you're used to it, but Michael's used to it. He's seen them through four new models now.

He's leaving the synthetic division. They try to act like Hyperdyne and Weyland aren't the same damn thing but everybody knows they are and they've had enough success these past few years that Michael's being sent to bioweaponry, where they hope to make their big bucks. He's leaving this behind, and he won't be sad to see the back of it. What he will miss, though, is the Bishop in the build room that they sent to him for quality assurance.

They've had him for three weeks now. There were anomalies detected when the production facility ran their checks on his main systems so they turned him off and shipped him straight to Michael's lab for them to check. They studied the test results before he arrived and Michael could see what the problem was: their shitty jigsaw puzzle code had lost a piece and what had slipped in there instead, while not the piece that they'd intended, still filled the gap. It was wrong but somehow almost elegant. It seemed like Michael was the only one that saw the unexpected beauty in what they were being asked to fix. 

"You look like me," the synthetic said as he looked at him once activated, still lying in the packing crate. A stamp on the side gave his serial number; the stamp beside it called him _Lance_.

"I do," Michael replied. 

"But you're not like me." 

"I'm not." 

"I see. That's interesting." He looked around, at the ceiling lights and the shelves and the concrete walls, then back at Michael. "Can I get up?"

"Please." 

He rose, pushing up out of dense foam packaging that had been cut to fit his body precisely. Michael knew if he'd lain down in it instead, it would have fit him, too. 

He was naked. There was no self-consciousness about it because they hadn't programmed that, but then again they hadn't programmed the inquisitive way he looked around the room. 

"Did you create me?" he asked. 

"Yes." 

"Why do I look like you?"

Michael's mouth twisted wryly. "Ask me again another day," he said. 

Lance nodded then said, "I'm naked. Should I put on some clothes?"

"No. I need to study you." 

Lance nodded again, like he understood. Then, after twenty minutes' poking and prodding, testing his reactions, he gave him a jumpsuit to put on. The resemblance between them was uncanny, but he guessed that had been the point of all the scans. 

The next day, he set the team to work on checking Lance's subroutines. He stayed out of the room, but every now and then he caught him watching through the glass. If he hadn't been synthetic, Michael would have said he looked intrigued. 

The following day, the work continued. Teasing out the damaged bits of code from what was right had been easy, but figuring out what the hell the damaged bits did was something different; there was so much still there, crystalized artefacts of previous models built for different things, rewrites, overwrites, redundancies, that they had to simulate each section one by one, using computer models. All they'd ever done was add to what was there already, deactivating what they assumed wasn't required, not subtract.

The day after that, the work continued. It went on the next day and the next, while Lance sat quietly in the build room outside, watching through the double thickness of bulletproof glass. Michael tried to ignore him but even when he didn't move, his eye was drawn. 

On the sixth day, Michael sent the team home. He went into the room with a datapad in one hand, the code to one of his subroutines scrolling on the screen, and he asked Lance, "What does this do?"

"It's part of a series of algorithms designed to estimate weights and measures at distance," Lance replied. 

"And this?" 

"Social subroutines. Fitting in with crew members. Behavioral analysis and prediction."

"This?"

"How my penis should respond to various forms of manual stimulation." 

Michael raised his brows. "Did we program you for sexual service?"

"No, but the system remains intact from Hyperdyne Systems model 129-4." 

Michael sighed. He rubbed his eyes. The way Lance's dormant subroutines were activating seemingly at random hadn't been planned at all. 

"Should I demonstrate?"

"Demonstrate what?"

"How I react to various forms of manual stimulation."

He should have said no, but frankly he was intrigued. And tired. Very tired. And skeptical, and jaded, and vaguely appalled, but it was far too late to recall the whole Bishop line based on the notion that someone out there in the colonies might decide to misuse a synthetic that looked like him, given that so many of them were misused anyway. So he nodded, and he said yes, and he watched his android double shuck his jumpsuit, then begin to stroke himself. It was less like looking in a mirror and more like looking at himself, his own hands with his own fingerprints moving over his own cock, right down to the moment that Lance gasped a breath he didn't need and came over his hand. 

Michael would have liked to have believed he was scientific about it but he wasn't, at least nowhere near completely. He was already hard by the time Lance was done, his erection pressing against the inside of his zipper underneath his neatly buttoned lab coat, and he reached out to run his fingers through the thick white fluid that had pulsed from the tip of Lance's own hard if synthetic cock. He sniffed at it on his fingertips and raised his brows. It was the inert filler solution that surrounded his various internal systems, viscous and faintly sticky. 

"I didn't program you for this," he said, holding up his hand. 

"No," Lance agreed. 

"Why is this subroutine active?"

"I don't know." He looked down at his own hand, covered in his not-quite-come. "Do you require another demonstration?"

He told him yes though he absolutely didn't require it. Then he stood, and he told him to clean up, and he left the room. Six minutes later, he brought himself off in his office with the door locked, his pants around his thighs and his fist around his cock. Somehow, he'd created a sex synth, except none of that was active in the other Bishops. He needed to work out which other subroutines were active and what the hell they did, or they couldn't sell this unit and management wouldn't like that. So, over the next few days, he embarked on a thoroughly scientific voyage of discovery. 

Lance could weld. He could pilot a ship. He could sew on buttons and perform CPR. The second day, when the team was gone, he dropped down to his knees and sucked Michael's cock. He was good at it. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend it wasn't a perfect replica of his own mouth he came into.

Lance could bend steel pipe with his bare hands. He could reprogram a door control panel and hack the company database from a terminal the team had believed was standalone. On the third day, when the team was gone, he unzipped Michael's pants and slipped one hand inside, and stroked him. He didn't close his eyes. When he came, against Lance's bare abdomen, it was hard to pretend it wasn't extremely familiar. 

On the fourth day, Michael kissed him. His mouth was warm but neutral and tasteless. His hair smelled only of foam from the packing crate. When he stroked him, and Lance took a synthesized kind of halting breath, when Lance shuddered and came and Michael licked his fingers, his come tasted like the bland nutrient paste they served to patients in hospitals. There was a non-zero possibility it was exactly that. 

On the fifth day, in the daytime, he asked him questions and Lance answered with unsurprising candor. As the hours passed, a hint of good-natured sarcasm crept in. That was not something Michael had hoped to teach him, but it did at least amuse him. 

Then, that night, once the team had left, Michael went into the build room. Lance was waiting. He smiled wryly. 

"How can I service you tonight, Michael?" he asked, his tone and his expression lost somewhere between teasing and utterly earnest. Michael laughed, and he couldn't stop.

The sixth night, he sucked Lance's cock on his knees on the floor till he came in his mouth. He spat instead of swallowing and used his ridiculous medical-grade come to finger Lance's asshole open so his cock could follow. Lance gripped the table that he'd bent him over and used it for leverage to push back against him. Michael gripped Lance's hips and watched his cock push inside him, the rim of his hole stretching well to take him in. He shouldn't have been surprised how real it felt. After all, all the synthetics had the same kind of skin over the same kind of muscle; in some ways, he really was no different from a sex synth.

Day seven, the questions continued. Michael asked himself the questions first, alone in his office, then brought Lance in from the lab and asked him, too. The difference was striking, but he guessed looking like him didn't also mean he'd act like him.

"You're more human than I am," Michael said, checking through the answers, amused by it but not actually surprised.

"I don't think that's true," Lance replied. "Ask yourself what you know about humanity." 

Michael put his head down on his desk. He laughed. He guessed he was right.

He's leaving the division soon. A few more days and he'll be gone. Now, tonight, three weeks since Lance arrived, he signs the order that approves him for shipping; by the time Michael arrives at his new post in bioweapons, Lance will be with the Colonial Marines. He hasn't done a damn thing to fix him, even if that's not quite what the records say, but that's kind of the point.

They don't make their new model synthetics from nothing. Some of their code is older than Michael is. He knows it's shitty and shoddy and an accident waiting to happen, and it's an accident he'll be responsible for. His team doesn't get why he made a model that looks like him but if they had to guess he'd say they think it's vanity; it's not. One of these days there'll be a problem that they won't be able to sweep neatly under the rug, and Michael's face will be all over it. In his darker moments, he believes he deserves that.

But, right now, a synthetic that looks exactly like him straddles his lap and kisses him. His desk chair isn't meant to take that kind of weight and it groans underneath them both so they stand up, both of them. Michael sees them in the mirror on the back of his door, standing there naked, and if he didn't know which of them was him he wouldn't be able to tell them apart. When he takes Lance's wrists in his hands and pulls him closer, when he slips his hands to Lance's hips and pulls him flush against him, his team would probably say that's vanity, amongst other things. When he tells Lance to fuck him and he does, a cock that's just like his pushing inside him, bent over his desk with his papers pushed onto the floor, when he watches in the mirror, they'd say that's vanity. It's really not. At least that's not the only thing it is.

The others are more like Michael than Lance is, straightforward and pragmatic; this one he won't be ashamed to send into the world. If they could make them all like him, Michael wouldn't feel the gnawing dread inside that he does sometimes. And if he could be like him himself, they wouldn't be here now. He wouldn't be putting on his clothes with his double's synthetic ejaculate still inside him, but Michael has only roughly the same levels of shame as the synthetics he creates. 

He's not a good man, and Lance was an accident he can't take credit for. But soon the synth division will be someone else's problem. 

He's cleared Lance for shipping. This is his last good act before he moves on to something ten times worse.


End file.
